plot graph with cylinder

Is it possible to plot a 3d graph by using a cylinders (or a tubes) instead of the default straight lines in Matlab?

Answer 1

[ag]

Hi @Gaetano Pavone,

Yes it is possible to plot 3d graph by using cylinders. To do so you may utilize the "cylinder" MATLAB function as demonstrated in the below code:

% Define the path of the 3D line
x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
y = [1, 2, 1, 2, 1];
z = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

% Define the radius of the tube
radius = 0.1;

% Number of segments
n = numel(x);

% Plot each segment as a cylinder
hold on;
for i = 1:n-1
    [X, Y, Z] = cylinder(radius, 20);
    Z = Z * norm([x(i+1)-x(i), y(i+1)-y(i), z(i+1)-z(i)]);
    surf(X + x(i), Y + y(i), Z + z(i), 'EdgeColor', 'none');
end
hold off;

% Adjust the view
view(3);
axis equal;

For more details, please refer to the following MathWorks documentation: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/cylinder.html

Hope this helps!